


sound and fury

by paperthestral



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (hopefully), F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Neighbor au, but let's be safe, enemies (kind of) to lovers, i can't stop writing lexa as a useless lesbian because it's the only pov i understand, i don't know if battle reenactments count as violence, mild (?) depictions of violence, the blood is probably like ketchup and stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 15:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19276225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperthestral/pseuds/paperthestral
Summary: All things considered, Lexa has a pretty good life. A great job, a house with a beautiful garden, the best nephew in the world, and a standing claim to the position of General Washington in her local revolutionary war reenactment group. If she could just catch the neighbor who keeps leaving their dog's crap on her lawn, everything would be just dandy.That would be easier, of course, if her prime suspect wasn't quite so pretty.





	sound and fury

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i have limited interest in American history and even less knowledge of how battle reenactments work. if there are any aficionados for either subject among my readers, let me apologize for doubtlessly butchering your passion. what we have here is the very best that slapdash internet research and several mike's hard lemonades could produce: nothing more, and nothing less. 
> 
> hope you enjoy <3 happy pride month y'all

Lexa glared through the front window, forgotten dishrag in her hand slowly dripping water onto the floor. A warm breeze from the kitchen window stole into the house, traitorously undermining the gravity of the moment by lifting a strand of hair into her mouth. Lexa spat it out. She might have found it funny had the stakes not been so high. The familiar footsteps were growing closer, and their owner would come into sight any moment now - 

There she was.

Lexa narrowed her eyes as the bane of her existence appeared around the corner, whistling cheerfully to herself and accompanied by an Australian shepherd whose spirits looked equally high. The two of them moved slowly down the street towards Lexa, idling whenever the dog found something interesting to sniff or the dog-walker whipped out her phone to capture a flower, or some aesthetic blade of grass or something. Lexa had no idea what sociopaths found photogenic.

The same cursed breeze from earlier wove around the pair, ruffling the dog’s fur and sending the girl’s blonde hair flying about wildly. Lexa had a moment of vindication - finally, some justice in the world - before the girl let out a musical laugh, accompanied by a few excited barks from the dog. Lexa swiftly quashed the brief swoop in her stomach when the girl turned her face up towards the sun, blue eyes sparkling. She'd probably eaten something that disagreed with her. 

The feeling was replaced a moment later with blinding fury as the dog turned an appraising eye towards her front lawn. Her beautiful, meticulously maintained lawn brimming with native plant life that she had spent hours researching after reading about the endangered status of bees. Every square inch of the yard was the result of hours of careful work spent trimming, mulching, watering, weeding, and fertilizing. When Lexa’s first winter in this neighborhood had come around last year, she’d trudged through snow with teeth chattering violently to wrap her Japanese maple saplings lovingly in insulation to shield them from the cold. She quietly relished the memory of Mrs. Mullins from across the street eyeing her flourishing dahlias with obvious envy, mere weeks after snidely remarking that Lexa seemed to be overwatering her flowerbeds. Sometimes, the universe seemed to be taking pity on Lexa for all the times she’d crossed paths with the Mrs. Mullins of the world.

Other times, it hand-delivered an Australian shepherd circling in her yard in an alarmingly thoughtful fashion. Lexa watched with equal parts despair and tense anticipation as the dog paused its circling with an air of finality. Utterly oblivious to Lexa’s internal crisis, the dog folded itself into that dreadful squat and proceeded to ruin her day. If asked, Lexa could probably reproduce the exact image down to the polynomial equation that described the curve of the dog’s back. The scene was seared into her mind with all the permanence of a tragedy. Lexa knew it would fuel her nightmares for the next week. The girl smiled down and offered some vague encouragement that was probably unnecessary for the dog, but had the same effect of pouring water on a grease fire where Lexa was concerned. She took a deep, halting breath as the dog finished its ungodly task and rose, looking extremely pleased with itself.

The girl leaned down to pat the dog (Lexa inhaled through her nose with such force that her vision swam) and here it was: the moment of truth. Lexa felt herself go still as a deer listening for a hunter as she waited. No one could accuse her of not being fair, after all - if she was going to do this, she would do it right. 

~

For months she’d been unceremoniously greeted by piles of dog shit when she left for work in the mornings. The first couple times it had been an annoyance, but there was no discernible pattern to when the droppings appeared and she had no reason to suspect it was anything other than an aberration. She’d cleaned them up, hoping the matter was at an end and that the owner had simply forgotten a bag by mistake. When the next pile appeared a couple days later, though, and twice again the week after, Lexa was forced to accept that she was the victim of a repeat offender. Lexa couldn’t blame the dog for gravitating towards her yard - it was, after all, magnificent - but she couldn’t imagine how a dog owner could be so consistently irresponsible. It boggled the mind.

Well and truly boggled, Lexa’s mind was nevertheless prepared to endure the inconvenience at first. There are some problems you just can’t eliminate without moving to a secluded cabin in the middle of the woods and never interacting with another person ever again. Lexa had seen far too many horror movies to go that route. It was an annoyance, but she was prepared to weather the storm. She’d even bought some dog baggies resignedly on her last trip to the grocery, leveling them with such a glare as they moved innocuously down the conveyor belt that the cashier had gulped and made no attempt at starting conversation. Overall, it could have been worse - until one fateful day last fall. 

Her favorite (and only, but who was counting) nephew Aden had come for a rare visit, his first since Lexa had moved into the new house. Anya had insisted that Lexa finish moving in and putting away anything potentially dangerous (“Anya, he’s not going to die from packing peanuts.” “He ate a dragonfly yesterday, Lexa. He even liked it.”) before she allowed Aden to grace the house with his infectiously cheerful presence. Finally that day had arrived, and Lexa had heard Anya's car pulling into the driveway with a rush of joy she hadn't felt since before moving in. She'd hurried to the door porch and waited eagerly, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. She felt the beginnings of an embarrassingly wide grin tugging at her cheeks as she spotted the first glimpse of Aden's sandy-blond hair through the car window. He’d leapt out of the car almost before it stopped, barreling across the yard at full speed towards Lexa’s outstretched arms.

Overjoyed at the sight of him, Lexa’s eyes fell too late on the fresh pile of dog droppings in Aden’s path. She’d only just opened her mouth to shout a warning when the edge of his heel landed right in the center of the pile.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Aden’s expression morphed from excitement to surprise as his feet flew out from under him and his arms cartwheeled wildly. It might have been funny if Lexa’s mind hadn’t been busy cataloging all the possible ways he could injure himself upon landing. She was already sprinting across the lawn when Aden’s yelp of pain, mingled with a shout from Anya, echoed across the neighborhood and Lexa felt her heart stop.

One sprained wrist and an absolutely ruined outfit later, Aden was cheerfully shoveling ice cream into his mouth and watching TV on Lexa’s couch while she sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, replaying the incident over and over in her head. If she had no sense of self-preservation and a slightly firmer grasp on humor, her guilt might be tempered by how cartoonish the whole thing had looked. Her poor nephew had, for a split second, borne an uncanny resemblance to the Scooby Doo villains he loved to laugh at as they tried to skedaddle from a crime scene. The memory of Aden’s whimper of pain when he’d tried pushing himself up erased any possibility of her mood lightening, though, Scooby Doo or no. 

More ice cream. That’s what was needed. Lexa shot to her feet so abruptly that Aden glanced over in surprise and strode to the freezer, yanking it open with such force that dogs everywhere moved nervously on to their next life. Was it dogs that had nine lives? Lexa had never really been an animal person. 

The sound of the front door opening shocked Lexa out of her animal-related musings. She took a breath to steady herself and walked towards where Anya was shrugging off her coat, pausing only to deposit a ridiculously large serving of ice cream in front of Aden. To his credit, he looked up at her with a slight frown before evidently deciding that investigating her mood was not worth endangering his mother’s newfound leniency towards ice cream. He dug in happily as Lexa came to a stop in front of Anya, wringing her hands. 

Anya didn’t look at her, just breezed straight past her to hang up her coat in the closet. Lexa tried to ignore the pang of hurt in her chest as her sister shut the closet door. 

Without turning around, Anya sighed and her shoulders seemed to loosen a little. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Lexa looked back at her nephew, wielding his spoon with single-minded purpose and a technique not unlike that of a carpenter trying to chisel through a particularly tough bit of drywall. He’d definitely gotten that from Anya. She replied softly, trying not to interrupt him. “How could it not be? I should have noticed. It's my house.”

“Lex, you don’t even have a dog. Of course it’s not your fault. It’s not like it had even been there very long, it was - ” she closed her eyes and spoke her next words in a haunted whisper. “Still warm.”

A long, painful moment passed in which they both struggled not to relive the past half hour and failed miserably.

“Anyway,” Anya continued, a little more loudly than before. “It wasn’t your fault, and he'll be fine in a few days. But Lex, Aden could have gotten really hurt. Not to mention it’s just unsanitary. I might have to deworm my kid, Lexa!” Her voice rose a little at the end, and Lexa might never have detected the faint quiver in Anya's voice if she didn't know her sister so well. 

Lexa felt the last of her resolve crumble like...well, like her poor innocent nephew into a steaming pile of dog crap. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and slid miserably down the wall, closing her eyes when her butt thumped against the floor. After a moment, she felt Anya lower herself down beside her, setting down the bottle of Ibuprofen she'd bought with a quiet clink. There was a light pressure on her shoulder, and she cracked an eye open to see Anya resting her head there gently. Lexa’s eyes burned, and she couldn’t have interrupted if she wanted to when her sister began to speak quietly. 

“I’m not angry at you, Lex. I know you adore Aden and I know how much you’ve wanted him to come visit. But I’m his mom, and I can’t have him getting hurt. Or running around in a lawn full of dog poop, for that matter. It's not your fault, but from what you said this has been going on for a while. You’ve got to figure out who’s doing this and take care of it.”

Throat tight, Lexa nodded.

Clearly sensing something was amiss with the adults, Aden’s head popped up around the corner. “Are you okay, Auntie Lexa?” he asked, head tilted to one side. Lexa let out a shaky laugh and nodded, going for reassuring. She apparently missed the mark because Aden’s forehead crinkled with worry and he came trotting up to her side. He studied her for a moment before offering a gap-toothed smile and leaning down to plant a sticky kiss on her forehead. Aden was at the age when every inanimate object was alive and kisses fixed everything. And maybe, Lexa reflected as a real laugh bubbled up in her chest and Aden clapped delightedly, he had a point. 

...Perhaps she should apologize to her freezer for being so harsh with it earlier. 

As Lexa drew Aden into her lap and he began to chatter excitedly about the Poke Man (?) he had apparently been watching, she swore a silent vow to find out exactly who had been defacing her lawn. And once she did, she would show them exactly why she had been nicknamed “The Commander”.  
~

But not today, apparently. Lexa deflated as the girl pulled out a bag in a businesslike fashion and knelt to pick up after her dog. The Australian shepherd tugged at the lead, looking eager to escape the scene of the (almost) crime. Lexa sighed, resolutely ignoring the rather fetching way the sun was catching the girl’s hair as she bent over her revolting task. Really, it was unfair for anyone to look that attractive picking up poop. Especially since she already knew the girl was guilty. 

Lexa, fresh off an episode of NCIS and still smarting from the Aden incident, had recently had the brilliant idea of installing a camera in her yard. Her mind had offered up variety of increasingly satisfying scenarios, where she confronted the offender with incriminating footage and they threw themselves upon her mercy. Unfortunately, being an avid fan of crime shows apparently didn’t translate to expertise in setting up surveillance equipment. When Lexa retrieved the camera to review the footage a couple days later after a new pile had appeared, it had fallen on its side. Watching the recording, she found that the camera had only captured the dog’s feet and fringes of fur on its rear end as it squatted. It didn't leave her much go on to identify the perpetrator. She’d set up the camera again (more securely this time), only to have it disappear from her yard the very next day. Justice never came easy, apparently. It wasn’t worth buying another only to risk the same thing happening again, so she’d make do with what she had.

A few days later Lexa found herself ordering a pair of bird-watching binoculars off the internet and questioning her life choices. It took several days of careful observation from her front window before Lexa was comfortable in her decision that the Australian shepherd (and by extension, the pretty girl she always saw walking it) was the criminal she sought. Lexa was almost surprised by how smoothly it had gone. Apart from one incident where Mrs. Mullins had apparently noticed the binoculars in her windowsill and taken it upon herself to inform Lexa regretfully of how very long it would take her to transform her yard into an ideal bird watching habitat, that is. Lexa could only nod, trying to look suitably mournful while also like she knew what a black-headed grosbeak was. She'd done her best but it was a difficult line to tread.

Fending off Mrs. Mullins was the only real difficulty she encountered. None of the other dogs she saw regularly had those generous white fringes of hair along their back legs, and the unique spotting on the paws identified via binoculars only confirmed it. It was with a not-insignificant twinge of regret that Lexa disassembled the bulletin board she’d assembled in anticipation of a lengthy investigation. It didn’t take long, considering it was bare except for two fuzzy photos of the dog’s feet and fringes she’d gotten from the camera footage. And if she’d intentionally chosen blurrier photos than was strictly necessary because it lent an air of mysteriosity to the whole affair? That was no one’s business but Lexa’s. Work had been slow lately. 

The mystery had been solved, but the need for a confrontation remained. Aden would never be allowed back until Lexa could reassure Anya that she’d resolved the issue. It didn’t seem like today would be the day, though, as the girl straightened and encouraged the dog to hop out of Lexa’s lawn. As she turned to continue down the street, Lexa wasn’t quick enough to duck out of sight and their eyes met.

Lexa felt a quick flash of anger, watching a slideshow of all the piles left in her yard over the past few months play through her mind like the world’s worst powerpoint. The anger was undercut with something else, though, something that simmered oddly in her gut. Hatred, probably.

The girl smiled and raised her hand in a cheery wave. Lexa’s traitorous hand rose of its own accord immediately in response. And promptly deposited an ungodly amount of soapy water in her eye from the forgotten dishrag in her hand. 

Lexa fled to the sink with stinging eyes cursing dishes, dogs and everything in between, leaving the girl staring after her with a puzzled expression.

**Author's Note:**

> now that i've got you, let me introduce you to my passions three: cool birds, cooler flowers, and (coolest of all) gays armed with revolutionary war era replicated weaponry. clarke x lexa may be the most beautiful relationship to ever grace the field of fiction, but it is closely followed by lexa x her bayonet.
> 
> as always, catch me on tumblr at @paperthestral to chat about this fic or literally anything that catches your fancy. next update should be in a week or two, on sunday. probably looking at ~5/6 chapters or so by the end? time will tell
> 
> anyway, thanks so much for reading! please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed, the comments on my last fic were the whole reason this got posted at all. y'all are the backbone of society <3


End file.
